Your Bees Don't Have to Die—How Can We Become Treatment-free without Killing our Colonies?

摘要

Keeping bees with my dad was fun when I was a kid in Northern Wisconsin. It was in the golden era of beekeeping - it was easy, the bees all lived, and I hadn't even heard about the varroa mite. Fifteen years later, while in school in Michigan, beekeeping didn't seem as fun or as easy. Every conversation that I had with beekeepers centered on figuring out why their bees were dying. Beekeepers were sick of losing bees, and sick of treating for varroa. They wanted treatment-free strong, northern bees. So I started rearing queens with the goal of raising these strong, northern bees that could thrive without treatment. I had been collecting swarms for years, getting the best queens from local beekeepers, and trying out fancy stock like Canadian Buckfastand Minnesota Hygienic. I had been reading up online, and I wanted to find the best bees that could survive varroa. At that time, there was a lot of support for the 'Live and Let Die' method - where you let your bees go with no care, and whichever ones 'survive naturally' are your new, better stock. I had some colonies that I thought had a lot of potential, so I let them go, hoping to find out which hives held my new, hardy, treatment-free bees. The outcome that spring was horrible, and really made me rethink why and how I want to keep bees. In this article, I am going to explain why the 'Live and Let Die' system doesn't work for my beekeeping (and probably yours too), and to give you a new method that can help you find your best bees while keeping you happy and your bees healthy.